Local Government Board : Medical Officer's Report for 1886. (Pre-
sented to both Houses of Parliament.)—This is a very remarkable production, and by no means a comforting one. The main points to which the reader's attention is directed are the diffusion of small-pox from small-pox hospitals, the spread of scarlatina and diphtheria by milk from diseased Cows, and the vile sanitary condition that still prevails in the country, and its admirable adaptiveness for the spread of cholera. The thesis put forward by Dr. Buchanan, and sustained by a powerful array of facts and arguments, is that the small-pox hospitals, excellent as they are for preventing the general spread of the disease, do, in fact, become centres of infection for the districts in which they are situate, and the alleged reason is that infection is carried by the dissemination of particles emanating from diseased patients in the air to as great a distance as a mile radius from the hospital. Whether this thesis is to be regarded as absolutely proved or not, it should at least be a warning to hospital authorities to try every known method of disinfection to destroy or prevent the escape of the suspected atoms. The investigation into the causes of the fatal outbreaks of diphtheria at Camberley and of scarlatina at Wimbledon have established a new cause of anxiety as regards cows, for, coupled with Dr. Klein's researches into the micrococcus scarlatincv and the inoculation of animals with the disease by means of the communication of the microceccus to them, it has been shown that the disease is mutually intercommunicable between at least cows, if not other domesticated animals, and man. This result, while it certainly serves to strengthen the doctrine of the efficacy of vaccination, reveals a new danger in its use, lest in trying to escape one disease, we should be infected with another. But, again, the remedy is to take special precautions in regard to the health of animals under our charge, and to enforce for selfish reasons the precept that the merciful man is merciful to his beast. The "Cholera Survey" reveals grave and preventible dangers to public health which still prevail in too many districts, notwithstanding the Public Health Acts and the universal institution of sanitary authorities.
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